


Bullet Caught Between Your Teeth

by npcx



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, First Kiss, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trust Issues, spoilers for anyone who hasn't at least finished the casino, third chapter might happen at some point but dont hold your breath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 14:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10642050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/npcx/pseuds/npcx
Summary: Akira's forgiveness is unrelenting. Akechi's heart can hardly keep up.





	1. This Was Supposed To Go Differently

There is hardly time for thought when the shot rings out. One moment Akechi is stuck in a standstill with his cognitive double, bracing himself for the inevitable, and the next he is pushed to the ground by an inhumanly fast thief clad in black and gunfire rings in his already pounding ears. Shouting voices clamour around and above him, the telltale sounds of battle and his own double’s screams of rage, but it feels somehow far away, as though the body shuddering above him has pulled Akechi somewhere much farther from the fighting, and not mere feet.

Akira’s hands are shaking on his back, face buried in the junction of Akechi’s neck. This - this wasn’t how things were supposed to go, Akechi thinks. Nothing since the interrogation was how things were supposed to go, but somehow this especially. Seized by a burst of anger, he shoves Akira upwards and back - how dare he cradle him, save him, pretend to care, as though his false selflessness will earn him Akechi’s loyalty, his affections, his-

Candy red blood spatters on the ground between his sitting form and Akira’s prone one. Akira is curled in on himself, clutching desperately at his side. The bullet hadn’t missed. Akechi’s own blood turns cold in his veins at the sight - this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

It’s Akira’s voice that snaps Akechi from his paralysed indecision, a sharply pained inhale that pierces his bones. Lurching forward, his right hand shakes even as it grips Akira’s jaw firmly, his left rifling through the pouch at Akira’s hip for the medicine he knows is kept there. His adversary’s skin is clammy, red gloves wet with the blood that pours steadily from the gunshot wound in his abdomen. Too low to have punctured a lung, Akechi thinks dimly, but should it have hit a kidney he wouldn’t be surprised. Idiot, idiot, impulsive selfless idiot, what kind of fool throws himself in front of a bullet meant for someone who, for all intents and purposes, had murdered him?

Akira’s eyes are blurred with pain when Akechi pries the boy’s mouth open and forces a life stone past his teeth, into his throat, foreign saliva slick and hot on his gloved fingers. His throat spasms and Akechi holds his mouth shut, refusing to allow him to spit up the foreign object.

“Swallow it, Joker, you idiot,” Akechi hisses, and the first measure of lucidity since the gunshot rang out enters Akira’s eyes as his throat works to swallow under the detective’s grip. The faint light of healing magic pulses beneath the thief’s bloodied hands and while still frighteningly pale, a hint of pink returns to his cheeks as the life stone does its meagre work. Akira takes two deep, shuddering breaths and Akechi loosens his grip on the boy’s jaw. His desperation fades rapidly as the flow of blood slows to a sluggish crawl. So fixated on the wound, it takes a moment for Akechi to register the strange vibration under his palm as Akira’s speech.

Snatching his hand away as though it had been burned, his gaze snaps up to meet Akira’s glossy eyes and wry grin.

“What did you say?” Akechi asks, choked, forcing the words not to shake as desperately as his hands.

“I said,” begins Akira, and Akechi silences the part of his mind that whispers so hopefully that the emotion in the boy’s grey eyes is fondness, “thank you.”

The dam bursts then, adrenaline and hatred and hope flooding from his limbs and leaving Akechi boneless as this boy- this idiot- gazes up at him in all his bloodied, selfless perfection, and Akechi can’t hold himself up against the unrelenting force that is Akira any longer. He slumps forward, broken mask and tainted costume fading into blue flame as his uniform replaces it in the blink before his face comes to rest on Akira’s chest, body wracked with sobs. Fingers still wet with blood rake through his hair until Akechi’s sobs become shaking breaths and the forgotten sounds of battle come to a close.

The first pair of feet he sees are Morgana’s, the strange little monster-cat Akechi has yet to figure out.

“Joker, for future reference? Pointing at something with a knife and leaping does not qualify as a plan! And neither does getting shot! Getting shot is right up there in the ‘Things Not To Do As A Phantom Thief’ itinerary!” the cat-thing lectures, but its typically commanding little voice is threaded with exhaustion and enough worry to drown its small form.

“I - I can’t believe you, man - don’t you dare do that again, you could have died!” Ryuji, this time, shouts paired with heavy footsteps as the brash boy runs towards his friend.

“But I didn’t,” replies Akira weakly, smile evident in his voice, and the noise Akechi lets out into his chest is half-laugh, half-sob.

Akechi blocks out the rest of the Phantom Thieves’ tears and joy and consternations as best he can, focusing all his limited concentration on the steadying of his breath in dedicated effort to match the rise and fall of Akira’s chest beneath his forehead. He doesn’t want to hear this - doesn’t want to think about the relief they feel at Akira’s continued life when he knows, in all likelihood, that they would feel equal happiness had Akechi been struck with the bullet instead. But Akira shifts, jostling his head as he rises to his feet, and Akechi keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the ground as Akira rises to join his friends. He has no energy left, whether to fight or protest, and there is little chance that the Phantom Thieves' earlier pleas for him to rejoin them were anything but a bluff meant to lower his guard. Surely they can't turn him into the authorities, but such a simple punishment is hardly the extent of the possibilities open to them. The sudden appearance of a hand in front of his face wrenches him from his thoughts.

The gloved hand outstretched to him is as shocking as it is familiar. Still kneeling, Akechi looks up to meet Akira’s gaze and sees the same expression as earlier - grey eyes, normally so guarded, filled with pain and fondness and maybe the faintest hint of desperate hope, and it's far more effective than any bullet might have been.

“Stay with me,” Akira murmurs, a quiet plea meant for him and him alone. The others are behind him, shifting uncomfortably as though they’re not quite sure what they should be doing with themselves, but they may as well be part of the backdrop for all Akechi pays attention to them. No, his eyes are fixed on Joker, the impossible idiot who shouldn’t be forgiving someone as foul and dirtied as him, but somehow he is, and Akechi - Akechi doesn’t have the strength to deny him. Not now. Not any more.

When he reaches out for that red-gloved hand, Akira threads their fingers together and doesn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> akechi deserved better


	2. But Maybe It's Going To Be Alright

Akechi doesn’t question it when Akira leads him towards Yongen, hand still grasping his own and shaking near imperceptibly. Doesn’t question it when he pushes open the door to LeBlanc, Sojiro Sakura looking up lazily at the ringing of the door’s bell, then with a startled double-take as he processes the sight of two teenage boys. Hand in hand and both still flecked with blood, the one who had murdered the other staring blankly at their entwined fingers. The man gives a long-suffering sigh when he rubs his eyes and seems to realise that no, his eyes are not playing tricks on him, and no, the teenage hitman has not gone away. Akechi doesn’t envy him.

He’s not sure what it is Akira says that convinces Sakura to close up the cafe with Akechi still in it, brain too dense with the fog of exhaustion to focus on anything other than the odd sensation of fingers between his. Still afraid to acknowledge that this is happening, that he hasn’t been left for dead in the bowels of his father’s detestably opulent Palace. Perhaps if he neglects to think about it, reality will neglect to pull him back to where he knows he is supposed to be - bleeding out from his own double’s bullets, the exact end a disgusting fool like him deserves.

Akechi doesn’t let himself think. Not when Akira leads him up the stairs, not when he nudges his shoes off at the doorway of his room and indicates that Akechi should do the same, not when he bypasses the couch and collapses onto the bed under the window, hand in hand the whole time, pulling Akechi with him. Akechi doesn’t let himself think until Akira has covered the both of them with the duvet, still clad in their day clothes, and holds Akechi closer than the detective had imagined possible; Akira’s arms under his and around his back, legs tangled together, face yet again buried in the junction of his neck.

He doesn’t let himself think, not until the realization creeps into his mind that this is the closest he can remember being to another person. Until he wonders at the foolish trust Akira displays in having his vulnerable neck pressed so closely against his own and how easily he could wring the life from it. Until he realises with a pang that right now, killing Akira is the last thing he wants to do.

And if Akechi cries at that, just a little, Akira is the only one who has to know.

 

He wakes in the morning to sunlight streaming through the window and the intermingling scent of coffee and curry. Akira is awake already, changed out of yesterday’s clothes and into sweatpants and a cotton shirt. There are two meals laid out on the table in front of the couch, one half eaten, the other untouched. Rising silently, Akechi makes his way to the couch, hardwood floor cold beneath his feet. Curry for breakfast - strange, but not nearly as strange as having a meal already waiting for him.

He eats without a word, reluctant to be the one who speaks first as though putting words to the situation would cause it to dissolve beneath his feet, reveal itself to be just a dream, another illusion of peace. He has already displayed enough weakness, and tension builds in him the longer the silence stretches on until he feels not unlike a cornered animal, stuck between lashing out and running away. The remnants of his breakfast have long gone cold by the time Akira speaks.

“Anything,” says Akira, pale fingers worrying at the hem of his pants, knees drawn up to his chest, and suddenly it’s like the quiet had never existed at all. “Ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer. It isn’t fair of me to know your secrets when you know none of mine.”

“That hasn’t stopped you with anyone else,” Akechi mutters, bitterness lacing his words like poison. “Everyone opens their hearts to you- perfect, selfless Akira, every outcast’s best friend- and you get to stay as private as you like while drawing the secrets right out of their chests.”

“I know,” he replies, startlingly blunt as he meets the detective’s gaze. As though he doesn’t have anything to hide. _Liar_. “I don’t like being vulnerable. I don’t like opening up. But you’re important to me, and I don’t want to do that with you.”

“So you can control me? Make me feel trusted? Special, so that I won’t be expecting it when you stab me in the back?” Akira shifts at the accusation, lowering one of his legs and tugging at the bangs between his eyes, an infuriatingly endearing habit that Akechi loathes to see.

“You’ve already killed me. I don’t think it’s possible to see me more vulnerable than you already have.”

And god help him, there really isn’t much Akechi can say to something like that. Knowing that it had been Akira’s cognitive double does little to soothe the guilt that shoots through him like ice in his bloodstream.

The exhilaration he had felt upon killing him - Akira, Joker, leader of the Phantom Thieves and infuriatingly perfect, the boy with everything he had been denied - had been fleeting, power-mad adrenaline fading with each rivulet of blood that had poured from Akira’s forehead, glassy eyes frozen in the shock of betrayal. Everything standing in his way had been eliminated, his adversary defeated, and finally the masses would come to their senses and Akechi would be praised as the hero who had saved Japan. Strange how hollow it all seemed when the only person to have shown him genuine companionship lay cold and lifeless in a bleak, dark cell. But it had been too late for regret.

“And I’m being selfish,” Akira says, tearing Akechi from his reverie, a little more hesitant to meet his eyes this time. “I want you to know me. More than the others do.”

Akechi’s brain stalls trying to make sense of a sentence like that, refuses to draw conclusions based on a quiet confession and distant, half-lidded eyes. He can’t afford to get his hopes up, not when this whole fragile situation could yet crumble in his impulsive hands.

“What are your parents like?” he blurts instead, mind too wrapped up in disentangling itself from the terrifying hope blooming in his ribs. Akira winces. A sore topic.

“Split. Argued constantly for as long as I can remember, but at least when they were together they yelled at each other more than me,” he answers, eyes fixed on his fingers as he pulls at the hem of his sweats. Evasive body language. Obviously not accustomed to talking about it. Akira falls silent, and Akechi is tempted to ask if that clipped response is all he’ll get, when Akira takes a deep breath and continues.

“I was living with my mother before I got sent here. I was already a nuisance - sucking up all her hard-earned money, acting like my father, looking like him too. She barely needed to hear the details of the assault charges before she organised for me to be anywhere other than there.”

“She hasn’t contacted me since I arrived in Tokyo,” he says, eyes sharp now, loose thread twisted around his fingertip tight enough that the usually pale digit is blotchy red and purple from constricted blood. “And I’m happier for it.”

A few things make sense now, Akechi contemplates; how Akira, usually so laid-back, would jump to attention like he’d been shocked in his rush to comply to Sojiro Sakura’s requests. Akira had never struck him as a people-pleaser, nor Sakura to be the disciplinarian type, but a history of conflict and violence in the home could instill that in a person. Even one as skilled at playing the disaffected as Akira is.

But this was too small, a snippet of childhood, something Akechi had offered to Akira ages ago, pulled near-unwittingly from his tongue by understanding eyes and a friendly smile. Not enough, not nearly, not even _approaching_ equal yet.

Akechi lets himself mull over his next question, watching Akira shift slightly under his gaze. His usual confident posture is stilted, glasses long forgotten next to the bag on the other side of the room. His hands are shaking ever so slightly as he massages his index finger until its circulation returns to normal. The sight of Akira’s uncertainty, however minute, is a rush of power to Akechi’s lungs. He lets the silence stretch for several long moments before choosing what he wants to ask next.

“What are you most ashamed of?” he questions, leaning forward this time, russet eyes probing grey for any expression of vulnerability. He is rewarded with just a hint of incredulity in Akira’s widened eyes, a touch of embarrassment in slightly pinker cheeks. On anyone but Akira, it would be a poker face. But on him, it’s something that makes Akechi’s heart pound violently in his chest.

“I didn’t want to let them live,” Akira replies shakily, and oh, that answer came much quicker than Akechi expected it would. “Any of them. Not Kamoshida, or Madarame, or Kaneshiro- I wanted them dead. I wanted them to be in pain. If - if Ryuji hadn’t been there with me the first time I entered a Palace, I don’t know if they’d be alive.”

Akira is breathless as he confesses, eyes fluttering shut as the words escape him, the picture of a sinner in a confessional, and Akechi stifles a laugh at the thought that it leaves him of all people to act as the priest. His heart is beating hard enough to leave him lightheaded; _now_ he was getting somewhere, words that weren’t paltry snippets of an unseen past. This was something Akira’s idealistic friends would shudder to hear, and Akechi dimly realises that his eagerness has left him leaning much closer than he had been before. The words that fall from Akira’s lips next are unprompted, warm on his face even as his own breath catches in his throat.

“I knew you were planning to kill me after the first week you joined the Phantom Thieves.”

Akechi can’t bring himself to move as Akira opens his eyes to meet his shocked stare head on, grey eyes and delicate lashes and breath hitting his cheek.

Thinking back to every interaction - in the Palace, in Mementos, over coffee in LeBlanc just short of closing time. The cheeky grins and borderline-flirtatious comments and the brushing of fingers at the train station, all proof that Akechi’s plan had been working perfectly, and Akira had known? Had fought alongside him, joked with him, smiled at him with the most sincere affection Akechi had ever been privy to, and all along knew Akechi had planned to kill him? Either Akira was the most gifted actor he had ever met, or-

“I didn’t care.”

This time Akechi can’t stifle it, delirium and disbelief welling up in peals of laughter that leave him leaning bodily on Akira’s shoulder, shuddering in his effort to suppress it. There simply isn’t anything else he can do. Akira’s wandering hand finds its way into his hair in moments, playing with it even as Akechi pulls back with a hand over his mouth and deprecative mirth in his eyes.

“You’re an idiot, you know,” Akechi admonishes through his fingers, shoulders shaking. “Buddying up with your murderer. You’re completely out of your mind.”

“I wasn’t going to let it happen,” Akira says blithely, as though the reasoning could possibly make it any better. “So I wanted to enjoy having you around while I still could.”

“Idiot,” he repeats, softer this time but with no less laughter. It’s impossible to think of a more articulate response when faced with the look Akira gives him, all gentle sincerity and no small measure of humor, as though Akechi’s previous intent to kill him was nothing more significant than a difference of opinion. His fingers are still curled in Akechi’s hair.

“It’s your fault, you know. I might have been sensible about it if you hadn’t made me like you so much.” Akira leans forward as he confesses, voice barely raised above a murmur. Their noses are nearly brushing. Akechi stills, face growing worryingly warm, his heart forgetting to beat for a moment only to make up for the lapse by resuming at double the pace. “You out-thiefed me. Stole my heart and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Hope and fear and desperation - Akechi can’t tell the difference between the emotions that hit him all at once in a rush, but it can’t be real. Akechi is- people don’t- it’s too _perfect_ , too close to dreams that leave him with an ache deep in his chest before he forces himself to remember that someone like him isn’t capable of being loved. His hand is resting above Akira’s collarbone before he’s fully cognizant of it, falling back on wild instinct in sudden, vicious denial, pressuring the vulnerable veins of Akira’s pale throat.

“Don’t- don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare,” Akechi snaps, voice wavering even as his fingers tense. “I killed you. I shot you. You don’t love me. You can’t.”

“I’m not lying,” Akira murmurs, and Akechi feels the vibration of each word as the boy’s vocal cords work beneath his clenching fingers. “Akechi, I promise I’m not lying to you.” Akira - Akira’s hand still hasn’t left his hair, shifting to coax him down, closer to the other boy’s face.

“Don’t patronize me!” Akechi’s breathing is labored, his mind racing with too many thoughts and not enough, and this isn’t what he wants to be doing but it’s all he can think. “I could kill you- I could kill you right now and you wouldn’t be able to do anything, so don’t lie to me, _please_ , just- stop.”

But Akira’s palm is on his cheek now, something in his eyes Akechi is too frightened to identify as he makes no effort to fight against the grip on his throat. Even as his face flushes and breathing becomes a struggle, Akira, the trusting fool, just - watches.

The impulse fades fast, Akechi’s grip going slack as he lets out a choked- _ha_ \- laugh, and Akira pulls him down onto his own shuddering chest, pressing his face into Akechi’s hair. It’s ridiculous, how such a simple gesture makes him weak, but the fight drains out of him nonetheless as Akira noses at the side of his face, the affection as frightening and foreign as it is welcome. They lie there, Akechi calming ever so slowly as he matches his breathing to the steady rise and fall of Akira’s chest, but a whisper at his ear is enough for his heart to race rabbit-fast again and heat return to his cheeks in full force.

“Again,” he says, lifting himself just enough to look Akira in the eye, who answers with a _hmm?_ and a lazy smile that only causes the detective’s cheeks to flush more.

“Say - say that again,” he clarifies shakily, and Akira’s expression is achingly fond as he leans close, too close, and, _oh._ Lips are on his, soft and pliant and devastatingly gentle and Akira may as well be grasping his heart in his hand because when he pulls away just barely it feels as though his heart follows with him, and their lips brush with each following word.

“I said, ‘I love you.’”

So maybe, Akechi thinks, pressing kiss after desperate kiss to Akira’s smiling mouth, if it’s with an idiot like Joker, Akechi can be a fool for long enough to hope for a happy ending. 

Even if it’s just for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“also,” whispers akira, teeth grazing the hollow of akechi’s throat, “being murdered is kind of hot.”_
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> morgana went to sleep at sojiro’s house for the night, i promise he wasn’t in the bag at the side of the room the whole time
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> thanks for the positive feedback, everyone.


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